The outcomes of this session will inform the finalization of a Food-water-energy nexus training programme that has been designed for cities.

Urban resource systems are under stress due to climate change and growing populations, and many urban and environmental experts would agree that conventional siloed approaches often miss opportunities to manage these resources more efficiently. Food-water-energy nexus is a powerful concept for showing the interdependencies between systems. It is clear that cities play an important role in managing resources, but are often unable to integrate different mandates or work across sectors. The Understanding Innovative Governance for Food, Water, and Energy Nexus in Cities (IFWEN) project has been developing innovative governance tools to support cities to adopt nexus approaches that connect food, water, energy, waste and nature. As part of the outputs of this project, a training programme has been developed to share insights from the project and provide opportunities for city-to-city learning. The manner in which this training takes place is through co-learning, with guidance from specialists. In this session, the IFWEN training program will be launched. The training program structure will be presented to participants, providing an opportunity for them to shape the key questions and content of the program. In addition, the session will provide an opportunity for participants to share relevant materials which should be included as resources for training participants. This process will ensure that the training program is fine-tuned and gread towards the actual needs of the cities in the context of FWEN, while offering a wide range of relevant materials to support cities. The outcomes of this session will inform the finalization of the training programme, to which all participants will be invited.

Host: ICLEI

Session Summary

This session, Doing FWEN: Launching a food-water-energy nexus training programme, hosted by Pourya Salehi of ICLEI Africa, opened a discussion on food, water and energy systems and how best to build a training programme that equips us to strengthen the food-water-energy nexus in our cities.

Jose Puppim De Oliveira of IFWEN, a team of researchers working towards improved governance of the interactions between food, water and energy in cities, shared about this organization’s work, and dealt with some of the key learnings from their research. He highlighted the importance of connections, and emphasised the power of connections to enhance resilience in FWE networks.

Based on the outcomes of IFWEN’s research and ICLEI’s experience, ICLEI Africa plans to launch a training programme that increases local government’s competence and confidence when planning for integrated resource approaches in their jurisdictions. The food-water-energy nexus often proves to be a barrier to optimal functioning in Global South cities, and this training programme hopes to be able to boost government capacity to navigate the management of these systems well.

Jokudu Guda of ICLEI Africa then shared a planned outline of the training programme and invited discussion and feedback from participants through breakout rooms.